There's working, and then there's working

I have a great deal of respect for the things that Ann Romney has accomplished.  She has raised five children, she has been supportive of her husband, she has battled serious health issues.  None of that is accomplished by sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.  I'm sure she has had her share of midnight awakenings, days when she just didn't feel like getting out of bed, and moments when she just wanted to scream.

That said, she and the rest of the Republican party are deliberately misunderstanding what Hilary Rosen meant, and they bloody well know it.  Ann Romney has never had to do all those things and then go work for eight hours because if she didn't there would be no food on the table.  She has never had to figure out how to keep the heat on, pay for braces, and still put something under the Christmas tree.  There are millions of women -- including me -- who would give anything to be able to do the sort of "work" that Ann Romney has done, and be "not wealthy" the way she is.

According to U.S. Census data, "Nearly one-fourth of all married-couple families in the U.S. had a stay-at-home mother."  In other words, over three-quarters did not (although to be fair some percentage of those did not have children), and that's not even counting the single mothers.  This is why President Obama holds such a significant lead over Mitt Romney with women -- because his family experience more closely matches theirs.  His mother worked when he was a child.  He knows what it is to raise children in a two-career family.  He knows about fitting student loans into the household budget.  He knows about having to rely on grandparents to help with child care.  The percentage of women who can see themselves in Ann Romney -- not only staying home with her children and her health issues, but not having to make hard financial choices as a result of doing so -- is a fraction of those who have seen that the President and First Lady understand the battles they fight every day.  A woman who worries about her children eating healthy foods, worries about affording health care for her family, worries about paying for the education she got and the fact that despite it she's not earning as much as a man -- that woman is an Obama voter.  And if Romney wants to close that gap, he and his wife are going to have some fast talking to convince those women that his administration would do anything but roll back the progress that they have fought so hard to make.